Friday, August 10, 2012

Bobby Derrick

Located on the northern Oregon coast, Sand Lake cannot be classified
as a city or a town due to its small population but, perhaps, it could
be classified as a com­munity, although many people would argue that
is stretching it a bit. Driving through the community, one sees an
occasional house, a trailer home, the grange hall highlighting the area.
There is no police or fire department, no res­taurants or movie
houses, not even a church. There is, however, a gas station and a
country store, both of which could be easily missed by the blink of a
passing eye.
Sand Lake is normally peaceful, though, a small coastal town where a
few people make their home, located on the shores of the Pacific Ocean
about 65 miles south of Oregon’s northern border. Most of the
residents’ necessities are obtained in nearby Tillamook, 14 miles to
the northeast, or in Portland, about 85 miles northeast. When Sand
Lake’s resi­dents are in need of emergency services, such as fire,
police or medical, they are usually supplied by Tillamook city or
county authorities, but it is rare that they are needed. However, on
the morning of December 26, 1981, it would be a diffe­rent story indeed
when the Oregon State Police and the Tillamook County Sher­iff’s
Department were called to the scene of a brutal double murder that
would shock this small community and leave them talking about it for
years to come, an act so vicious, so cold-blooded that it would
ultimately shatter the tranquility of the northern Oregon coast.
The day after Christmas, spirits should still be running high, and it
should be a time of good will, joy and happiness. For most people it
is all these things and more, but for the Derrick families of Sand Lake
it was a time of death, a time of tragedy and sadness so severe that
each subsequent Christmas and New Year could only serve to renew sad
memories of the events that transpired on late Christmas evening in
1981.
It was approximately 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, December 26th, when Mark
Schackart, Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher, received a
phone call from a distraught man who reported that a possible shooting
had taken place in a trailer home in the 19100 block of Derrick Road
in nearby Sand Lake. The caller could not give any specific details,
but told Schackart that he feared some­thing dreadful had happened at
his brother’s trailer, located across the road from his own home.
Schackart assured the worried man someone would be there to investigate
shortly, then notified the state police and dispatched one of his own
deputies as well. The trip from Til­lamook to Sand Lake via U.S.
Highway 101, the Pacific Coast highway, took about 10 minutes.
Michael D. Stephenson, Oregon State Police investigator, and John E.
Johan­nessen, Tillamook County deputy sher­iff, were the first officers
to arrive at the trailer home. The name on the mailbox listed the
resident as Robert John Der­rick.
The two policemen met with Der­rick’s brother, the man who notified
the authorities, before going inside the trail­er. They took notes as
the man talked, then entered the trailer. They were a­ghast at what they
saw.
The inside of the trailer was literally a bloody mess. Everywhere the
two cops looked; there was grisly human tissue and blood, some of
which was still very wet. On both sides of the walls in the narrow
hallway, there was a spray of blood with bits of what looked like gray
matter of the brain clinging to the walls and the floor. There was also
a consider­able amount of blood on the floor, as if someone had fallen
and bled profusely. The blood on the floor was smeared, as if the
person wounded had attempted to crawl, or was possibly dragged through
it. It was not a pretty sight, grisly enough to make even the most
hardened cops queasy and nauseous.
When the cops made their way into the main bedroom they were equally
shock­ed, perhaps even more so, by the mess there. The bed was drenched
in blood, and there were the same traces of gray matter on the wall at
the head of the bed. There were sprays and spatters of blood on the
walls on either side of the bed, and the cops could detect traces of
what appeared to be powder burns on the sheets and mattress. Again the
blood was smeared on the sheets, as it had been on the hallway floor, as
if the person injured had moved himself or had been moved by another
person.

The cops had no doubt that a shooting had occurred, and it most
likely resulted in someone’s death. But, the body or bodies were
nowhere to be found. Also, the cops wondered whether just one per­son
had been injured, or more. The cops couldn’t be sure at this point, but
it looked to them like two separate shoot­ings had occurred. Could the
victims have been the residents of the trailer, Robert and Bonnie
Derrick? Again they couldn’t be sure, but that seemed the most likely
possibility.
Stephenson and Johannessen were careful not to disturb anything until
addi­tional help arrived and began processing the trailer for clues.
Stephenson called his own office in Portland and requested that a team
of investigators from the Ore­gon State Police crime labs be sent out to
go over the place, and Johannessen cal­led his department for
additional de­puties and homicide investigators. They needed additional
personnel to not only search for clues, but to help protect the crime
scene as well.
While they were waiting for the addi­tional help to arrive,
Stephenson and Johannessen interviewed Robert Der­rick’s brother, the
man who initially cal­led them to the scene. The man reiterated what he
had already told them, adding that his brother’s pickup truck was
mis­sing from the residence. He told the cops that he hadn’t heard
anything unusual, and hadn’t seen anyone drive away with the pickup. It
was a mysterious and baf­fling case to say the least, particularly
since the cops had so little to work with at this point. They knew
there was plenty of evidence inside the trailer, but little of it would
be useful until it could be re­trieved and sent to the state crime
labs for analysis.
When the state crime lab technicians and photographers arrived, they
wasted no time. Police barriers identifying the property as a crime
site were quickly put up, and police photographers thoroughly
photographed the trailer inside and out. When they were finished, the
crime experts began orderly processing of the evidence available to
them.
While the crime lab technicians were gathering blood samples, as well
as paint and fabric samples, detectives began a methodical search of
every room of the trailer. Within no time at all, detectives had
ferreted out a shotgun from an undis­closed location. The cops suspected
that it had been fired recently, but they couldn’t be certain until
the weapon had undergone a firearms examination at the state crime
labs.
While technicians and detectives were working inside the trailer,
Tillamook County deputies were searching outside the trailer as well as
adjacent properties. They were looking for anything which might prove
useful, but were hoping to find the victim(s) of the alleged shoot­ing,
who would either be dead or dying. There was no way, the cops reasoned,
anyone could sustain such severe in­juries that would involve the loss
of brain tissue and blood and be able to survive. If they did, they
would most assuredly be in a vegetable state and would probably be
better off dead.
Meanwhile, detectives felt certain that they could obtain some
valuable clues as to what happened on the evening of December 25th or
early the next morning if only they could find Derrick’s missing pickup
truck. An APB was immediately issued for the much sought vehicle, and
detectives decided it would be a good idea if they began an air and
ground search for the missing truck or any dead bodies that may have
been dumped in one of the hundreds of thousands of re­mote square miles
in the area.
By mid-afternoon little progress had been made in the case, and
neither the Derricks nor their missing truck had been found. The cops
were speculating that when they did turn up, they would be dead and
their truck probably would turn up in another state. None of the cops,
at this point, really had any idea which way the case could turn. All
they could do was develop theories as to what happened based on the
information they had, changing those theories as new informa­tion
dictated.
The case took a dramatic turn around 4:00 p.m. when an air-search
team from the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Depart­ment reported spotting a
pickup truck matching the description of the Der­ricks’. They reported
that the pickup was lying at the bottom of a 70-foot embank­ment at
Cape Lookout State Park, about three miles from the Derricks’ trailer
home.

State troopers and county deputies hastily converged on the area,
knowing they had their work cut out for them. They would have to get
down the steep drop off somehow and check for any survivors, and would
have to make arrangements to have the wrecked pick­up pulled up to the
road.
Although they really didn’t expect to find anyone alive in the truck,
a group of deputies nonetheless quickly descended the steep embankment
to check for survi­vors. When the deputies reached the pickup, they
horrifyingly discovered their original assumption had been cor­rect:
there were two very dead bodies inside.
The bodies were those of a man and a woman, both naked. The cops
could see at a glance that the couple hadn’t died as a result of the
trip down the embank­ment, but had instead died violently at the hands
of a merciless killer who had intended that they die.
When the deputies and crime lab personnel had removed the two bodies
from the truck, they could see that they were fresh corpses. Rigor
mortis was just beginning to set in, an indication that the man and
woman had been dead only a few hours (rigor mortis usually sets in about
12 hours after death and is com­pleted and sometimes gone by 48
hours).
The faces of the two murder victims had been blown almost completely
away by what the cops and medical examiner believed were shotgun blasts
at close range. Although state police and county detectives believed
the two victims to be Robert John Derrick and his wife Bon­nie, they
knew they would have to make positive identification to be certain.
Since identification by sight would be next to impossible due to the
severe con­dition they were in, the cops also knew that positive
identification would have to be made through comparison of dental
charts with impressions taken from their teeth.
It didn’t take long for the authorities to determine that the pickup
truck belonged to Robert Derrick. They simply called in the vehicle’s
license number to the Ore­gon Department of Motor Vehicles for
confirmation, the results of which nar­rowed the gap of doubt as to whom
the victims were. For all intents and purposes, the cops knew at this
point that the victims were the Derricks, but they still had to be one
hundred percent certain and ordered the dental comparisons.
By now the news media had received word about the grisly discovery at
Cape Lookout State Park, and some over­zealous member of the press
managed to get behind the police lines to get a closer look and some
pictures. It didn’t take long for a state trooper to notice the
un­acceptable infraction.
“Get your reporters out of there,” he said to the newsman in charge.
“They’re down there tromping all over potential evidence. Why in the
hell do you guys think we put up police lines? Certainly not for
dramatic purposes. Can’t you guys read? It says, ‘DO NOT CROSS.”‘ The
cop was obviously angry, and right­ly so. It was his as well as every
other cop’s responsibility to make sure the crime scene was protected
from intrud­ers, no matter how well-meaning they might claim to be. The
newsmen knew they used poor judgment in going behind police lines and,
needless to say, it didn’t take long for them to scramble back to their
appropriate places.
Next was the troublesome if not pain­staking job of getting the
victims’ pickup pulled back up the 70-foot embankment. To accomplish
this somewhat difficult task, three heavy-duty tow trucks were called to
the scene.
After the workmen secured the pickup to the tow truck win­ches, the
removal process began. It took nearly an hour for them to get the
wreck­ed vehicle back up to the road and, when they did, the authorities
ordered it moved to the state police crime labs in Portland for a
thorough going-over.
At this point in the investigation the cops had a lot of questions
they needed to answer in order to make any progress in the case. Why,
for instance, were the two victims naked? Had their clothes been removed
to prevent a prompt iden­tification of their bodies? This seemed the
most likely possibility, but the cops had to consider they might have
been naked when killed, particularly if they had been in bed just prior
to the shooting. This seemed likely as well, especially if the victims
turned out to be Robert and Bonnie Derrick, for at least one person was
shot in the Derricks’ bed while it was believed another person was
shot in the hallway of their trailer home. The cops knew they had their
work cut out for them in this case, and that a lot of ground had to be
covered before they could begin to answer their nagging questions with
any degree of certainty.

Meanwhile, state troopers and county deputies combed the surrounding
area for clues, many retracing their steps back to the spot where the
pickup and bodies were found. A photographer from the sheriff’s
department took pictures of the immediate area as a back-up for the
state police photographer. The more photo­graphs the better, he
reasoned, as he photographed the two bodies from every imaginable
angle. He was obviously nauseous, and a loud sigh of relief could be
heard when the somewhat macabre job was finished.
As the photographer was busy packing up his equipment, a doctor
representing the Tillamook County Medical Examin­er’s office arrived to
take a look at the two corpses. Although he believed the victims’
deaths were caused by the gun­shot wounds, he said autopsies would have
to be performed to be absolutely certain. He then authorized the
deputies and troopers to have the bodies taken to Portland, where the
postmortems could be conducted under the direction of Dr. William
Brady, Multnomah County medical examiner.
At the Multnomah County morgue, the two bodies were quickly
identified as 44-year-old Robert J. Derrick and 26-year-­old Bonnie P.
Derrick. Soon after the identifications had been made, patholog­ists and
toxicologists from Portland routinely converged on the corpses and
proceeded to conduct the autopsies under the direction of Dr. William
Brady, who described every action and every finding into a tape
recorder’s microphone.
It didn’t take long for the medical ex­aminers to determine the cause
of the Derricks’ deaths. By the conclusion of the autopsies, after
extensive examina­tions of the head injuries, the doctors unanimously
agreed the victims died as a result of being shot in their heads with a
shotgun at close range and concluded that the couple had been dead less
than 24 hours when discovered.
In the meantime, police were having a tough time with their
investigation, and had no suspects in custody yet. There were plenty of
clues, but they weren’t yet pointing in any one direction. To make
matters worse, their evidence gathering had been greatly hampered by the
heavy winter rains, a problem which prompted detectives to fear that
many potential clues may have been lost be­cause of the heavy incessant
rainfall.
When the crime lab experts finished with the pickup truck, they had
plenty of fingerprints to give the detectives. But the cops knew that
even latent prints would be of little use at this point in the
investigation, because those lifted from the inside and outside of the
pickup would have to be matched to a suspect after the suspect was taken
into custody and fingerprinted.
Even though the prints would be easi­ly identifiable when being
compared with the prints of a suspect, the cops knew they would still
have to go through the somewhat tedious task of searching the
fingerprint files. Because general fingerprint files, such as those of
the FBI, are arranged or sorted using a sys­tem that requires prints
from all ten fin­gers, a single or even a few prints found at the scene
of a crime usually can’t be checked anyway. Unless, of course, the
prints are those of a known criminal, such as a kidnapper or bank
robber, for which case some major metropolitan police departments and
federal law en­forcement agencies maintain a single fingerprint file.
But this was clearly not that kind of case here, and police offi­cials
were getting nowhere fast in their investigation of the double killing.
The rude awareness that two very vio­lent murders, not to mention the
subse­quent slipshod attempt at disposing of the corpses, had been
committed on the usually peaceful shores of the Oregon coast had spread
quickly throughout the communities located up and down High­way 101,
creating an ominous atmos­phere of gloom over the, region. The
population’s general feeling was that a heavy pall now covered everyone
and everything. And as time went on, those feelings intensified due, at
least in part, to the fact that the cops still had no one in custody
and weren’t willing to discuss who their investigation was focusing on
as a possible suspect.
However, just when the investigation seemed to be at its lowest point
(as is usually the case when dealing with the complexity of a homicide
investigation), police officials received the break in the case they
had long been seeking. Tilla­mook County investigators, as well as
detectives from the Oregon State Police and Washington County, were
tipped that the Derricks’ 16-year-old son, Robert Lyle Derrick, also
known as “Bobby,” had escaped several weeks earlier from the Cordero
Juvenile Deten­tion Facility in Hillsboro and had been hiding out from
authorities by staying at least part of the time at his parents’ trailer
home. Detectives eagerly wanted to find Bobby so they could question
him. It was entirely possible, they reasoned, that he knew nothing, but
cops’ instinct told them otherwise.
The latest theory detectives had de­veloped indicated they believed
that Derrick and his wife were shot gunned to death either early
Saturday morning or late Friday evening, December 25th. The cops
believed that Derrick was shot in the hallway of the trailer and that
his wife was shot as she lay in bed.
In an attempt to uncover as many pertinent facts to the case as
possible, detectives quest Toned John Derrick’s brother again, as well
as his wife. The couple lived across the road from their murdered
relatives’ trailer, and detec­tives hoped they might be able to learn
something useful. The information they were told was indeed quite
useful, enough to steer their investigation to­wards a suspect. Their
suspect was the murdered couple’s own son, Bobby.
The dead couple’s relatives told the cops that Bobby Derrick came to
their house and told them, “Someone mur­dered my folks,” showing little
emotion when he made the shocking statement. Another relative backed
up their story. With that, the cops decided to return to the trailer
with hopes of finding informa­tion that might lead them to Bobby.
When they arrived at the trailer, sleuths were relieved when they
found Bobby inside. Tillamook County Depu­ty Sheriff Johannessen
routinely ques­tioned the youth about his parents’ vio­lent deaths, and
Bobby answered him very calmly. He told policemen that someone murdered
his parents on Christ­mas evening, but would not or could not say who
committed the violent act. Get­ting nowhere with the teenager, the cops
took him into custody on charges stem­ming from his escape from the
Hillsboro juvenile detention center and booked him into the Tillamook
County Jail.
Although Bobby Derrick remained calm while being questioned,
something about his demeanor bothered the cops, prompting them to
interrogate the run­away teenager again. He was taken from his cell into
an austere interrogation room where he was seated at a square table.
During the subsequent questioning, probers noted definite conflicting
stories about what had occurred on the evening of December 25th and
the morning of December 26th, not to mention the ab­sence of a decent
alibi. When they asked Derrick if he killed his step-mother and father,
he repeatedly denied the insinua­tions. In spite of the denials,
detectives felt sure he was the killer, and decided to employ an unusual
and shocking technique to get at the truth.
They left the room for a few minutes, leaving Bobby there alone to
think and contemplate the situation he was facing. When they returned
they had a large man­ila envelope in their possession. After a few
moments, they took out several 8×10 black and white glossy photographs
of Bobby Derrick’s parents after their bodies had been found. The
effects of the photos were grisly and gross for the cops, to say the
least, but they were profound, almost devastating, for Bobby Derrick. He
began to shake, and tears were soon streaming down his face.
After calming down a bit from the ini­tial shock of seeing his dead
parents’ photos, Bobby broke down and made a complete confession to the
detectives. It was indeed a surprise to the cops that they obtained a
confession from the teenager so quickly. Even though they had a gut-
level feeling that he was the guilty party, they thought they would have
a tough time getting the confession, if at all.
“He sat and tears ran down his cheeks for two or three minutes after
he saw the pictures,” said Oregon State Police In­vestigator Michael D.
Stephenson, who was one of the first officers to arrive at the murder
scene. Stephenson said that after he was finished crying, Bobby
appeared calm once again and gave them a more detailed account of what
had hap­pened.
Derrick told the cops that he and his father had become involved in a
heated argument on Christmas evening and, as the altercation
intensified, Bobby’s father threatened to have him returned to the
juvenile detention center he had escaped from a few weeks earlier. In a
fit of anger, the younger Derrick got hold of a shotgun his dad kept in
the trailer and shot his father in the hallway. He then went to his
parents’ bedroom where Bon­nie, his stepmother, was lying in bed. Before
she knew what was happening, he shot her once in the face at close
range, killing her almost instantly.
Bobby Derrick also admitted to Stephenson and Johannesson that he
then loaded the bloody, naked bodies of his dead parents into the back
of the family pickup truck, drove it approximately three miles to Cape
Lookout State Park and, leaving the truck’s gearshift in neu­tral,
pushed it over the 70-foot embank­ment where it was found.
The cops then handed the case over to Robert D. Wasson, Tillamook County D. A.
The case looked like it would be easy to prosecute, particularly with
all of the physical evidence and the confession. But there was a
problem, and that was that Bobby was only 16 years old and under the
jurisdiction of the juvenile sys­tem. Knowing that if Bobby were
con­victed in juvenile court, according to state law, he would be
released on his 21st birthday. For that reason, Prosecu­tor Wasson chose
to file a petition to remand Bobby Derrick to adult court where he
would face murder charges for killing his parents. Wasson was
success­ful in his attempt, and Judge Delbert Mayer ordered Derrick to
stand trial as an adult. Derrick was lodged in the Tilla­mook County
Jail under $300,000 bail on two counts of murder.
The problems facing DA Wasson didn’t end when Derrick was remanded to
adult court. In spite of Derrick’s inter­rogation room confession, the
suspect pleaded innocent at his arraignment by reason of insanity.
Derrick’s attorney, John Tuthill, introduced a motion that Circuit Court
Judge Delbert Mayer be disqualified from hearing the case be­cause
Derrick had appeared before the judge during the juvenile proceedings.
The motion was granted, and Washing­ton County Circuit Court Judge John
Lund was brought in to replace Mayer, thus enabling the trial to begin.
A key question in Bobby Derrick’s trial was whether the killing of
his pa­rents took place the night of December 25th or early the next
morning. The de­fense contended that the homicides occurred early the
next morning. Coun­selor Tuthill’s defense of Derrick was simply that on
Christmas night his client committed the murders while in a state of
“extreme emotional disturbance,” brought on by the, argument between
Bobby and his father shortly before the shootings occurred.
On the other hand, DA Wasson produced expert testimony from a
psychia­trist in his attempt to prove Derrick was rational when he
gunned down his father and stepmother. In the first four days of the
trial, heard in a packed court­room with standing room only, Wasson
called nine witnesses to the stand in his attempt to prove that Derrick
was ration­al and of sound mind and had premedi­tated the murders.
Wasson also called three relatives of Derrick’s as well as the law
enforcement officers involved in the case to testify about Derrick’s
emotional state shortly after the killings took place. They all
testified that the defendant seemed calm and unemotional after the
killings occurred.
In spite of a strong attempt to convince the jury that Derrick was
indeed mental­ly unbalanced at the time of the killings, his defense
wasn’t enough. The jury found Robert “Bobby” Lyle Derrick guilty of
intentional murder and first-degree manslaughter. Wasson was far from
pleased, as he had attempted to get an aggravated murder conviction, a
stif­fer penalty requiring that at least 30 years in prison be served
before being eligible for parole. As it turned out, Derrick can be
paroled in as little as five years by a majority vote of the five member
state parole board.
While the convicted murderer was awaiting sentencing in Tillamook
Coun­ty Jail, Derrick and two other inmates created a serious
disturbance in a com­mon jail cell on Monday, January 3, 1983. It was
not known if the disturb­ance was part of a plan of escape, or if the
inmates were just trying to cause trouble for the sake of causing
trouble. Just the same, according to Chief Deputy Mike Mee, all
available deputies, as well as two Tillamook City police officers, were
called in to help quell the disturb­ance.
According to the reports Derrick and the two other inmates attempted
to start a fire in the bullpen (a common jail cell used for housing
several prisoners) under the cell window to attract atten­tion,
allegedly to celebrate Derrick’s sentencing which was scheduled for
later that day.
“The disturbance broke out about 12:30 a.m.,” said Deputy Mee, “when
the three inmates barricaded the doors of the bullpen and set the fire.
They apparently were going to celebrate Der­rick’s sentencing, which
was scheduled for today.” He then added that the in­mates barricaded
the cell by pushing beds to the cell doors, then tying the beds to the
cell bars by using towels. “The other inmates didn’t want anything to
do with the disturbance and they asked to be let out of the bullpen,”
said Mee. “After this Deputy Mark Berrest and Lt. Jim Wagner, jail
corrections officer, tried to negotiate with the three inmates.” Mee
said the deputies had to eventually force their way in when
nego­tiations broke down.
“No one was injured,” said Mee, “but Mace was used on one inmate and
that cooled them down. Finally they had to cut the towels and force
their way in. They were contained from the start, but every time we have
a serious disturbance we muster all hands.”
Circuit Court Judge Jon Lund sent­enced Derrick to life in prison for
the murder of his stepmother, and meted him 20 years for the
manslaughter death of his father. Lund also handed down two five-year
sentences for the use of a gun in carrying out the heinous crimes. He
was immediately turned over to state correc­tional authorities and taken
to the Oregon State Penitentiary where he would serve his sentences
until such time that a parole board deems him eligible for parole.
D.A. Wasson had attempted to have the jury verdicts on Derrick set
aside after the eight-woman, four-man jury handed down the murder and
manslaughter find­ings instead of the aggravated murder charges (meaning
two or more persons killed in the commission of the same crime) which
had been sought by the state.
In his motion to set aside the jury ver­dicts, Wasson had charged
that Judge Lund had given wrong instructions to the jury before it began
deliberations at the end of the trial. The motion was denied by Lund,
however, and the verdicts were allowed to stand.
“Had Derrick been convicted of aggravated murder he would have
re­ceived a life sentence with no chance of parole before 30 years,”
said the some­what disgruntled Wasson.

4 comments:

This was my grandpa, stepgrandma. and my uncle, it heartbreaks me that ill never know any of them. I wish I knew what they were like. I wish his would have never happened but this is what true greed and envy does it distroys families. especially mine.